


Promise

by redskyatmorning



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec Lightwood Feels, BAMF Magnus Bane, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Magnus Bane, M/M, Neck Kissing, Parabatai Bond, nobody dies though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 14:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8756815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redskyatmorning/pseuds/redskyatmorning
Summary: On a mission to rescue Jace from Valentine, Alec is forced to make an impossible choice between two people he loves, and later he and Magnus must deal with the fallout.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the end of Season 1, but diverges totally from what we know so far about Season 2. In my defense, I started writing it before all the trailers and stuff came out.

Alec doesn’t realize quite how wet the rain has made him until Magnus opens the door to his apartment and visibly starts at the sight of him. He had gone out walking, and somehow his feet have led him here, as they often have done these past few days.

“What happened?” Magnus says, tensing immediately.

“Nothing,” Alec says, shrugging. Now that he is aware of his state, a shiver runs through him. “I left the Institute to take a walk, and I ended up here. I just – I guess I wanted to see you.”

“Oh, okay.” Magnus’s countenance relaxes, his face softening into compassion.

It’s been four months since Jace left with Valentine. These days, they are all on high alert, and every small sadness is hastily misinterpreted as emergency. They are all on the brink of something, but nobody knows what it is, and their minds are sharpened like blades in preparation. Their hearts, though, it seems, have become dulled in the fallout.

“Come in,” Magnus is saying, grabbing Alec by the shoulder. He then begins muttering under his breath, “you’re going to catch your death, Alec. I’m certain that they have at least one umbrella at the Institute. Or _call me_ , I can portal you over…dating the _High Warlock_ …good for something…”

Alec can’t help a small smile as Magnus ushers him inside, fretting over him in mutters and expressive hand gestures.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Magnus says eventually, raising an eyebrow, as he settles Alec on the couch, fluffing the cushions around him.

“I don’t know.” Alec shrugs again, smirk still playing around his lips. “I mean – it’s just rain, Magnus. I’ll live.”

He, of course, punctuates this sentence with a sneeze. Somehow, he feels colder inside the warmth of Magnus’s place than he did out in the rain.

Magnus tuts, but Alec can see how he tries to conceal a smile. “Hypothermia, Alexander. Or at best, sniffles, which I find dreadfully annoying. Anyway, do you mind if I – ?” He wiggles his ring-adorned fingers slightly.

Alec catches a glimpse of himself in one of the many mirrored surfaces around Magnus’s flat. As the downpour outside is torrential – the rain falling from thickly clouded skies like icy sheets – if he didn’t know better, he would think by his appearance that he had drowned and somehow crawled back to life. His lips and skin are pale and tinged with blue, his dark hair flattened and plastered to his forehead. Every few seconds, another involuntary shiver courses through him.

“Yeah, go for it,” Alec says.

Magnus waves his fingers and suddenly he is ensconced in tendrils of blue light emanating from those magic hands, and it feels as soft and electric as Magnus himself. A moment later, he is as dry and as warm as if he had been in bed all night. Something about it makes Alec feel safe, inexplicably; in his mind, he knows that rain would not have killed him, and he knows that he can handle anything that will try to. But that Magnus cares enough to waste his magic to make Alec comfortable, to avoid something as minor as a cold, fills him with a warmth that has nothing at all to do with the magic Magnus has just cast.

“Feel better?” Magnus says gently.

“Yeah,” Alec says honestly, “thank you, Magnus.”

“Need a drink?”

Alec hesitates. This is enough for Magnus to conjure up two crystal scotch glasses and proffer one to Alec.

“Thanks,” he says again, gratefully accepting it. “You’re too good, you know that?”

“Some would disagree,” Magnus says, winking at him with sudden green-gold cat’s eyes. It sends a shiver down Alec’s spine for reasons that he’s fairly certain have nothing to do with the weather.

Magnus settles down on the sofa next to Alec, who leans closer to him out of instinct. Alec swirls his whiskey absentmindedly, staring at the dark amber liquid as it forms a small whirlpool in the crystal glass. He knows if he looks up he will see eyes of the same colour staring at him intently, with affection and something deeper that Alec still does not know how to name – the closest thing that Alec knows to it is faith, but that cannot be right, this is not like any faith he knows – and he knows those deep amber eyes are far more dangerous and drawing than any vortex of any tide or any ocean. He knows that they will draw out the shadows troubling his heart, and Alec does not know if he wants anyone to know what they look like – he himself doesn’t want to know.

“Is there something you want to talk about?” Magnus prompts after Alec does not look at him for a few minutes, preferring to stare into his glass in silence.

Alec shrugs, still avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“It’s – it _is_ two in the morning, Alec. You’re always welcome, of course, but – please know that you can talk to me,” he says earnestly, “you know that’s what I’m here for.”

“I’m worried,” Alec says suddenly, looking up at Magnus with troubled eyes. “About tomorrow. What if - ?”

When Alec can’t bring himself to finish the question, Magnus reaches over and touches his cheek gently. “We will find him, Alec. Whether it’ll be tomorrow or some day after, we will find Jace.”

Alec swallows, closing his eyes for a moment and just feeling the soft skin of Magnus’s hand on his face. It is more comforting than he could imagine. “I’m just – this is the best lead that we’ve had so far, period. Even if it ends up being the right one, and it leads us to him – what if – what if I wake up tomorrow and I can’t – you know – I can’t _feel_ him anymore? And he’s – and I was too late?”

The ice-cold raindrops pelting him like knives had been distraction enough to drive the sickening thoughts from Alec’s mind as he walked the narrow, darkened Brooklyn streets in the midnight hours, the hum of traffic and the sheen of rain making the pounding of thoughts less loud, less painful. But now, in the warmth and light of this odd little place that is becoming like a second home to him, they come back to him in fearful chaos.

Magnus leans over and brushes Alec’s hair from his forehead in order to give him a soft kiss there. “It won’t be like that,” he says. “And if it will – ” Alec waits for words of empty comfort, but they don’t come, and Magnus’ voice becomes more strained. “It won’t be like that,” he says again after a few moments.

 _How do you know_ , Alec wants to say, but it feels so good to believe in Magnus, who is so easy to perceive as all-knowing, as all-powerful with his age and his knowledge and his magic; but you have to come up close to come to know that shadow on the edges of his eyes that betrays his weaknesses, the ways in which he is vulnerable. Alec does not know, still, why he has been allowed to see it.

“I’m worried about him, too,” Alec blurts instead, his fingers unconsciously brushing over the rune near his hipbone. Now fully facing Magnus, their bodies somehow closer together than they were a moment ago, all his hidden thoughts and fears are drawn out as if by magnetism. “He feels so weak. I’m worried about him – I wish things could be the same, sometimes, like they were before Clary showed up. But I don’t think they’re ever going to be again. And at the same time, sometimes I don’t – want – I – you know – ”

He tries desperately for some coherence, but the words are not coming; the feelings are not so simple as to be sounded by someone like Alec, who has never been good with any of this, who stutters and stammers at the best of times.

After what seems like ages, Magnus sighs. “You don’t want things to have changed, but you don’t want them to go back to the way they were. That, Alec, is fate’s and time’s cruelest game. But getting Jace back doesn’t have to mean that it will all be like it was before. Right?”

In Magnus’s comforting words is a small strain of hope, of the need for affirmation. They all knew, of course, after the day with the demon in Magnus’s lair, how it was with Alec and his parabatai – the feelings that he should not have, the darkest part of his dark heart. Almost ever since Alec opened himself up to feeling this thing for Magnus, Jace has been gone. Now, as they achingly hope for his imminent return, remains the question: what now?

Alec struggles to form the words, as usual. Magnus patiently waits, as usual – never rushing over him, never trying to cut him off and guess what the rest of his sentence was going to be. “It’s just,” Alec says finally, “it’s just so easy to breathe around you. It never was with him. What I’m saying is, this – you – you – it feels right, like it’s supposed to, it feels like – home, like – I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m sorry I’m bad with words.”

“Oh, Alexander.” Magnus’s expression, inexplicably, creases into something that looks like sorrow. “It’s not that you found me. You found yourself. And that’s not going to change when he comes back to you. I promise.”

The demands and torments of being in love with Jace, for Alec, had been unbearable. Though Jace only loved Alec with open-heartedness and brotherly affection, somewhere along the way, the blond boy had made every pulse of Alec’s heart an ache, every breath from his lungs a tribulation. It is hard to explain, how easy it is to feel worthless around Jace, when Jace was the first person to look at Alec like an equal, like a leader. But Magnus…unexplainable, unprecedented Magnus. Each time Alec holds the gaze of his kind eyes, it weaves some kind of protective magic against the rush of toxic thoughts that corrode Alec’s mind, taking them away for good. Beautiful eyes, dark and lined with glitter and kohl, with no trace of gold or angels, and nothing that he ever knew he wanted. He does not want this to change. He does not want to go back to the way it was.

He finds himself leaning his head on Magnus’s shoulder, comfortable inside the safety of his half-embrace. Closing his eyes, the only thing left in the world is the soft spell of Magnus’s steady breathing and the feeling of his hands running softly through Alec’s hair. The way he touches Alec is tender, but not like he is fragile, not easily breakable—instead, like he is something important, something beautiful to be cherished. It hurts in a way he does not perfectly understand yet.

After a long, warm silence, Alec says with difficulty, “I don’t feel whole without him. You know, part of me – some crucial part of me is missing. It always will be when he’s not around. But, Magnus, I – you – I – ”

“Hush, Alexander,” Magnus says with a faint smile, pulling him closer. “I know what you mean. Tomorrow, you’ll get him back. That’s what matters.”

*

At dawn, Magnus is already wide awake, before the sun has had time to spread its light over the sky, the edges of the horizon still smudged with inky blue. Even at this hour, he finds the couch empty, where Alec had fallen asleep not four hours ago. Sighing, Magnus draws up a portal to the Institute. Although he and Jace Wayland admittedly have not had much of a relationship, he finds himself jittery and uncertain, a well of dread opening up in the pit of his stomach, at the thought of today’s mission. It isn’t just Alec, it isn’t just the _parabatai_ bond – a boy’s life is in the balance, and with him, the future of the Shadow World as Magnus has come to know it over these past few decades.

He sighs again; it feels like only days ago when he and his kind could finally breathe again without the threat of extinction by Nephilim looming over their heads. But the half-angels never learn, and everyone else becomes the casualty of their repeated ignorance, a never-ending circle of bloodshed. Somehow, their reign is never challenged, foolish and short-sighted and short-lived though they may be. And Magnus, of course, is always stuck in the middle of them somehow; he really must get over his stupid habit of loving the children of angels, and his stupider habit of wanting to save everything he sees.

As Magnus walks through the foyer of the Institute, a few members of the Conclave are assembled in black battle gear, milling about in the silent near-anxiety that precedes a fight. Upon seeing Magnus, many of them turn their heads, and Magnus does not much care for the way they whisper to each other. His name, of course, is on their lips, a name that in these few centuries has come to mean power, eccentricity, a little darkness and a little uncertainty. _Magnus Bane_ , they whisper and communicate their fear of the unknown. To suit the occasion, he also chose to dress in black and limited jewelry (for practicality’s sake), but he’s not quite as unbearably dull as they are sartorially, battle or no battle. Of course, the only Shadowhunter that could understand the merits of matching glitter eyeshadow to apparel is locked in deep and serious conversation with her brother on the other side of the room.

He approaches Isabelle and Alec, looking – Magnus feels bad even thinking it on the seriousness of the occasion – sinfully attractive in the full black-leather getup, their conversation becoming louder as he gets nearer.

“You know how hard I fought for them to give me command. I _can’t_ screw this up, Izzy. Even if I don’t get one of us killed or if we don’t get him back, if anything goes wrong, the Clave won’t ever take me seriously again, and – Jace –  I – I – ”

“You won’t screw it up, Alec,” Isabelle says in the manner of someone who has made this reassurance numerous times in the past few minutes, clapping him on the shoulder. Her demeanour is still sympathetic, but she looks like she wants to roll her eyes a little bit. “I looked your plan over. About twenty times. If I didn’t think it was fine, I would tell you.”

Alec nods, but then quickly adds, “But should I be separating us? We fight better together, maybe I should – ”

“No, because then Clary and Magnus would be leading the second command under Mom. And you know – Mom and Magnus – that’s…”

“Not the best idea,” Alec finishes heavily. “And I’d prefer one of us to be with either party. I don’t trust Mom to trust my judgment, and Magnus is good, but he’s not you. But – maybe – shouldn’t Clary be with me? Magnus can hold his own, but she’s – ”

“Of course _Magnus_ can, have you seen his _abs_? He’s almost more built than you are. And secondly, she’s not as bad as you think she is,” Isabelle says. “She’ll be _fine_ with me, I’ve been training her, so it’s better that way anyway. And plus, you and Magnus have – ah – some natural chemistry that we should take advantage of.”

Magnus smirks as a crimson flush starts to creep up Alec’s neck as he begins to sputter at Isabelle’s suggestive wink (and perhaps also at the mention of his abs, which, he must admit without contrition, are spectacular). “I’ll take this as a cue to announce my presence,” he says, striding up to the pair of them. “Hello, Isabelle. Alec, my dear.”

Alec starts, taken by surprise, but Magnus doesn’t miss the curve of his barely-there smile once he registers Magnus’s presence. “Hi, Magnus,” he says, the blush spreading to his cheeks.

Isabelle, on the other hand, flashes him a brilliant grin outlined in immaculate red lipstick. “Hey,” she says. “Oh, I like your look today. So dark. Dark and _sexy_. Isn’t that right, Alec?” she adds, blissfully ignoring Alec’s wide-eyed, panicked glance at her, after which he determinedly focuses his gaze at some fixed point on the floor.

“Well, yeah, I mean – I – don’t – I’m not – as long as it’s practical. Nothing…dangling, or, you know, in the way, um – you know what I mean,” he finishes desperately, looking up as Isabelle starts giggling halfway through his mess of a sentence. “This is serious.”

“I’m aware,” she says, sobering slightly. “He’s my brother, too. Not just your parabatai.”

“Yeah, I – I know. I’m sorry, I’m just – ”

“I know,” she says with a small smile. “It’s fine.”

“As riveting as that was,” Magnus says, watching the whole exchange with some part amusement, some part something else that feels a little like homesickness, “can we get on with this whole thing? I’m starting to get a little stressed, and it’s not good for my skin. When one reaches one’s four-hundreds, one must be careful of such things.”

Alec glances at him with a fond half-smile. Magnus doesn’t miss the once-over that Alec gives him, an appraisal that, by the devastating look in his eye, is not at all unkind. When Alec licks his lips before he speaks, Magnus almost dies a little. “You’re right, Magnus. Iz, can you get Clary and Maryse in here?”

“Sure. You knock ‘em dead, big bro,” Isabelle grins.

Eventually, as everyone gets assembled, Alec calls the members of the Conclave in order in the middle of the ops room. He, Magnus, Isabelle, Clary, and Maryse are at the head of assembly. Magnus knows the battle plan by heart, having heard Alec go over it from midnight to two in the morning every night for the past five days, so he takes the time to observe Alec, tall and imposing in his battle gear. With his stature, his demeanour, and his intelligence, he should be formidable as a leader; but there is an uncertainty that undercuts every word he speaks, self-consciousness in his gestures and the way he glances around, as if looking for someone’s approval, or more likely, someone’s rebuke or rebuttal. It’s in these small things that the casual tragedy of Alec Lightwood becomes devastatingly apparent.

 “Alec, I still don’t think we should be separating,” Maryse starts when Alec begins assigning each person their faction. “Divide and conquer is well and good in theory, but – ”

“Mother,” Alec cuts in, voice as flat and low as always, but there is a muscle jumping in his jaw. “It’s the opinion of this mission’s command that the intelligence we received regarding Valentine’s and Jace’s location wasn’t just good luck. The most likely situation is we’ll be walking into some kind of trap. So it only makes sense this way. But you would know that if you listened to a word I just said.”

Maryse’s mouth flattens into a thin line, but she doesn’t say anything further.

Alec resumes until everyone has their assignments except for the three of them at the front. At this point he hesitates and exchanges a glance with Isabelle. She nods, and he seems to relax a fraction.

“Izzy – Isabelle,” Alec says, his voice ringing out clearly as ever, “you’re with Maryse and Clary. Magnus, you’re with me.”

There is a moment’s awkward pause as a sort of whisper is exchanged between three or four of the soldiers, followed by a derisive snort or two. Magnus makes out the words _of course_ , and _warlock_ , and another that makes something inside him clench like a fist, and he hopes sincerely that Alec did not hear it. But by the look on the poor boy’s face, it doesn’t seem so. For a few moments, nobody says anything; Alec opens his mouth but cannot form any words, looking almost as if he is confused. He looks to Isabelle, who is poised like a viper to tear apart the offenders, and his expression settles into one of resignation. He shakes his head at Isabelle, and, reluctantly, she does not act.

“Hey – ” Clary begins, but Alec swivels and gives her a quelling glare that looks more pitiful than he perhaps realizes. Whether from deference or sympathy, she doesn’t continue.

 “Okay,” Alec continues after the moment of tension has passed, but his voice falters slightly. He swallows hard and resumes louder, “okay. You know your positions. Magnus – um, Magnus is going to draw up the portals. Once we get to that warehouse, everyone do as told, or there’s going to be hell to pay. Maybe literally. Let’s go.”

Of course, pissing off a warlock is never a good idea. Normally, Magnus, generally a fan of public humiliation, would have made an excellent example of one of the men; but he, like Isabelle, refrained for Alec’s sake. While he’s still toying with the idea of transforming them into pigs or less savoury creatures, he witnesses from the corner of his eye one Clary Fairchild sticking out her foot in front of the two soldiers, who trip and fall to the floor spectacularly.

“Shit!”

“ _Fuck_ – ”

 Magnus catches Clary’s eye and she grins, while discreetly fist-bumping Isabelle beside her. Alec, at the head of the command, turns around at the commotion, eyebrows raised. He looks quizzically between Clary, Magnus, and Isabelle – his eyes seem soft, as if he might be smiling, but the rest of his face is set in the stony expression he seemed to have been forgetting lately, until now. He shakes his head and turns back around. Unlike the girls who are heading up the other faction, Alec does not walk in step with Magnus this time, striding several paces ahead, and barely acknowledges the comforting squeeze on the shoulder that Magnus gives as he steps forward to create the portal.

As they ready themselves to enter the battlefield, Magnus closes his eyes, holding onto Alec’s reluctant half-smile like it is a sliver of silver in his pocket. Stepping into the darkness of the unknown, he wonders if today will be the day he will die for the children of angels whose hearts are heavy burdens that he cannot seem to hold up and can never save, try as he might.

***

The industrial docks of Brooklyn are desolate on a good day, and today is the bleakest day of the year so far. The sky is heavily laden with dense grey clouds, creating a flat, lightless horizon, with the November winds biting any skin not covered with black leather battle gear. Alec barely feels the bitterly cold air on his face, ruffling his hair but seeming to pass through him as if he were a spectre, a shadow. In a way, he is, without Jace next to him. How much of that, he has been wondering lately, has to do with the old magic of the rune that allies them, and how much of it just Alec – Alec not knowing how to be anything except the obverse of Jace, the tall dark shadow that trails the golden boy in perpetuity.

From here, Alec can see the ocean, or the dirty parts of it that sweep the gritty shore, fettered by ships and steel and urban waste. Not for the first time, he wonders about its vastness past what the eye can see from the dirty city piers. But right now, he must focus his mind on the mission before him, feeling safe with Magnus walking a step behind him, feeling unbelievably guilty that Magnus thinks he should walk a step behind him.

The abandoned warehouse they need to be at is somewhat isolated, positioned on a wide, empty concrete lot near a shipyard, surrounded by dilapidated chain-link fencing. It looms large and foreboding as they approach it, as if it were haunted, that specific sense of calamity that lingers around these brick-and-metal buildings that have succumbed to decay and the ravages of nature and all the years that nobody cared for them. Everything is ruined eventually, nothing ever built to last, and time makes tragedy of all. Broken windows stare like accusatory eyes, boring into Alec’s skull.

But Alec could not take it if today ended in tragedy. He doesn’t think he would be able to survive it. That is not something he has told anyone, not even the late nights and early mornings in Magnus’s apartment, where it is somehow so easy to open up his guarded heart. If Jace dies today, he knows he will follow. There is no question. If they don’t find him, he will continue to waste away until he is a husk, empty, more of a shadow than he already is. The chill that goes through him and the goosebumps that follow have nothing to do with the weather, his heart beginning to race and his palms starting to sweat. There is no sign of demonic activity outside the structure, but that just serves to strengthen the uneasy belief that they are walking into a trap.

“Okay, everyone,” he says to the five soldiers that have followed him to the back of the lot. Maryse and Isabelle are taking the front. “You know your positions. We’re going in first. Everyone ready?”

There are murmurs of assent from the rest. Magnus steps forward next to Alec, uncharacteristically silent. His fingers, ever so slightly, are glowing with blue.

“Ready?” Alec says to him in a lower voice as they walk up together to the metal back door of the warehouse, bent out of shape and tagged with graffiti.

“Born ready, darling,” Magnus says with a flash of a smile that seems to not reach his eyes.

“Oh, and – Magnus, thank you. For your help today,” Alec says, hating how awkward and quasi-formal the words sound, as if Magnus is some colleague of his. Before he knows it, he’s blurting out, “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

Magnus’s furrowed brow eases, his expression softening in a way that is inexpressibly beautiful to Alec, like the bloom of some rare flower. The genuine smile that he gives washes over Alec like gentle rainfall, assuaging the knot in his stomach. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else, Alexander,” he says, and by the way he says it, Alec would almost believe it.

Though it is very much not the time nor the place, Alec impulsively reaches out and pulls Magnus into a soft, momentary kiss, grasping the warlock’s face in his hand, their lips just barely brushing against each other’s. They are both aware that all the other Shadowhunters in their party are behind them, watching them, and Alec hopes that Magnus knows what he is trying to say by the gesture. When he looks into Magnus’s eyes as he pulls away, by the way that they shine, he thinks with a smile that his point came across.

“Alright then,” Alec says, heart thumping fast and loud for more reasons than he could care to name, feeling like it is positioned somewhere in his throat, making it difficult suddenly to talk. “Let’s do this. Let’s bring him home.”

*

Inside the warehouse, it is almost pitch dark. If it were not for the faint glow of Magnus’s magic playing around his hands, and Alec’s partially unsheathed seraph blade, they wouldn’t be able to see more than an inch in front of them.

Alec swallows. As an archer, he gets uncomfortable even when he has no clear line of sight, and this is far worse. “Can you get some light?” he says quietly.

Magnus raises two fingers and a small orb appears in the air, emanating a steady but unobtrusive light. The interior of the building is just as desolate as the outside, with peeling plaster and faded concrete being the only thing that Alec can see in the large, high-ceilinged room they have just entered. Still, it is eerily quiet; no demons or any other creatures or Circle members are around. Alec’s every nerve is on high alert, but his heart has dropped somewhere to his stomach – something must be wrong, he thinks. A trap or bad intel: he doesn’t know what’s worse.

Since the coast is clear, the other Shadowhunters in his command follow suit eventually, and split up pairwise, covering the back half of the sizeable building. Alec reminds them to signal if they find anything, any sign of Jace or Valentine.

“Alec,” Magnus says after a moment. “Something isn’t right.”

“Yeah,” Alec says, mouth dry. “I can’t put my finger on what, though.”

Not half a moment after the words leave his mouth, the pulsing, faintly-blue light illuminating the desolate room is extinguished abruptly. Alec is left in complete darkness.

“Magnus?” he calls, trepidation rising. “Magnus!”

There is no answer for a few moments, and then Alec gets the only answer he needs to confirm his grim suspicions. The faint growl of demons surrounds him. He pulls out his seraph blade and the scene becomes eerily lit with its white glow. Around him are at least twenty or thirty Shax and Ravener demons clicking their pincers at him aggressively, and no sign of Magnus. The anxiety that congeals like something tangible at the pit of his stomach about the missing warlock has to be shoved to the back of his mind as adrenaline pulses through his brain and body – he’s not Jace when it comes to fighting, especially with blades, but hell if he’s going to let Shax demons get the better of him. Swinging the blade with technique perfected from years of harsh practice, he lets loose on the horde surrounding him, aiming for jugulars (or the demonic equivalent) and eyeballs with an archer’s precision.

After slaughtering about eight or nine of them, though, Alec’s initial surge of energy begins to ebb as apprehension seizes his thoughts – he’s outnumbered, Magnus is gone, the whole setup was a trap, no sign of Jace – and his movements become slower, less measured and methodical. He pays handsomely for the display of weakness, as he has always been taught will happen, when he stumbles back from one demon into the waiting claws of another. White-hot, searing pain rips through his right shoulder with such intensity that he almost cries out in shock – but if he falls now, he’ll be demon chow in twenty seconds flat. Switching his blade to his left hand he whirls around and stabs the offending creature in the face. But now he’s injured, and the horde of demons is still steadily gaining on him. He wipes sweat from his brow and tries to move his shoulder in a way that isn’t agonizing, to little avail. When he woke up this morning, he didn’t think that today would be the day of his death, but philosophizing about mortality has never been good for anybody in his line of work, nor anybody with his particular relationship status. Still, he takes a moment to reflect, almost idly, as he slices yet another demon’s throat open, his strikes now much more clumsy with his non-dominant hand. It’s hard not to assume that you’re going to get to grow old, even as a Shadowhunter. He thinks about the others’ reactions – would they grieve? His throat threatens to choke up as he is overtaken by harsh regret about Magnus, assuming he’s still even alive; he had expected more time with him, had counted on it, had – for once in his life – wanted more time. Ichor splatters on his face and neck. He grimaces. The demons come ever closer, and the severe throb in his shoulder is spreading slowly to the rest of his arm and chest. So this is it, Alec finds himself thinking, this is the death that I spent my whole life lying in wait for. It doesn’t feel like the end of a hero’s story; it feels dirty and small and unfair.

As he braces himself for the fatal wounds that are surely going to follow as his each breath and movement becomes laboured, he closes his eyes for just a moment. Before he opens them again, he hears the most gratifying sound he could hope to hear in this moment – the crack and snap of an electrum whip he knows well and loves.

“Alec!”

“Isabelle,” he calls out weakly. “Little help here.”

She and Clary both run up to him, slashing at demons left and right to make their path clear.

“Are you okay?” Isabelle says urgently.

“I’ll live,” Alec says grimly, “provided, of course, that we don’t die here.”

“Fair enough,” she says, turning away from him with that steely warrior’s glint in her eye, the thing that scares Alec more than anything – her lust for danger, her strange, fleeting love affairs with the battles he only fights out of duty and takes no pleasure in. Her whip cracks and, faster than he can even process, it’s around the throat of the nearest demon. “Let’s get these sons of bitches.”

“Where’s Magnus?” Clary asks, looking around in concern.

“I – I don’t – ” Alec swallows. “I don’t know. He disappeared and all these demons started – hey, Clary, watch out!”

She whirls around, fiery red hair flying behind her, and stabs the demon in the face three times with her blade. If it’s not exactly precise, it’s definitely effective.

“Nice one,” Alec and Isabelle say simultaneously – Alec surprised despite himself – and Clary smiles slightly.

The rhythm of the fight continues in this manner, with the grisly sounds of blood and ichor squelching through blades, in gruesome harmony with the choked and pathetic final breaths of Isabelle’s victims. With the three of them, it’s much easier to watch out for each other and prevent anyone from getting seriously hurt again. Alec’s shoulder has graduated to a dull ache that pulsates every so often; he should get it checked for poison, but that will have to wait.

Alec hears a clang and turns his head sharply – although she has taken out the demon advancing towards her, Clary’s seraph blade has clattered to the floor and been quickly swept away by the mass of demons. Weaponless, she looks over at the Lightwoods in a panic.

“Catch,” Alec calls to her immediately, and throws her his blade. She catches it as deftly as anyone would and resumes.

“Thanks,” she says, voice hoarse and breathless from exertion.

Alec, for his part, pulls out his bow and quiver, but at such close range and with no significant vantage point, he opts for grabbing an arrow by hand and stabbing the nearest demon through the optic nerve with brute force. Isabelle spares him a glance that’s almost amused. He shrugs. If it works, it works.  

At long last, after what feels like hours, the troops of demons seem to be thinning out. The moment Alec sees that it can be handled by two rather than three, he says to the others, “I have to – they took Magnus. I need to – to go. Find him.”

Isabelle nods. “We got this, big brother. We’ll holler if we need you. And get him to check out your shoulder once you find him.”

“Right,” Alec says, but that kind of certainty is nowhere in his vicinity right now. Isabelle was right earlier this morning – Magnus can more than hold his own in a fight, physically and with magic. If something – some _one_ – overpowered him in a matter of moments, it’s no small matter.

Alec shudders to think what could happen to Magnus if Valentine were indeed here. He has heard the stories of the Circle’s cruelty against all other denizens of the shadow world, of silver dollars pressed to werewolf children’s eyes until they were burned blind…With Magnus being the only Downworlder on the mission, Alec hadn’t even considered the fact that their enemies would have less than an ounce of regard for his life. That they would easily torture him for a moment’s amusement.  And yet he still came with Alec as if it were nothing. His heart swells painfully like it is going to burst open and tear him in half.

He finds his way out of the large room through which he and Magnus had first entered the warehouse. There is a narrow hallway, the walls made of peeling plaster and any light fixtures long burnt-out. His footsteps echo in the unsettling silence off of the cold linoleum floors. At the end of the hallway, there’s a door. Heart thumping wildly, injured and with no seraph blade, Alec draws his bow and approaches the door cautiously. He twists the knob slowly, but when he finally opens it, there is nothing – no sound from inside, no trap falling onto his head. But when he takes not more than half a step into the room, it swings shut behind him as if through a mind of its own.

“Who’s there?” Alec calls out into the darkness. With no blade and no warlock, he has no light source. His eyes try to adjust to the dark, but it so absolute that they cannot. “Anyone? Magnus?”

There is silence for a while, stretching on for so long that Alec is about to call again, when a voice comes in through the black.

“Magnus? No, not quite.”

A light turns on, flooding the room – a storage room, with old faded boxes lining the walls – with a dim yellow glow. The man that approaches him is a face that Alec has seen in all his nightmares since Jace disappeared.

“Valentine,” he whispers, his throat unable to form any other words.

“That’s right,” Valentine says, his voice carrying with a casualness that is almost infuriating. “Alexander Lightwood. I’ve heard much about you these past few months. It’s been starting to wear on me, actually. But enough about that. It’s me, but your warlock friend is here, too. Not by my choice, but these things, Alec, do happen, and we can make the best of it, can’t we? Come forward, boys.”

There is no nightmare that could have prepared Alec for what follows Valentine’s command. Two Circle members step forward at their leader’s words, clad in their black suits as always. Each of them holds a blade in their hand, and each blade is at the throat of another man that they have overpowered. Alec lays eyes on the first, and his heart swells up in a joy that is so absolute it feels strange and ill-suited to the situation, his lungs finding it easy to breathe for the first time in months: it is Jace. Bloody and weak-looking, his golden hair limp and scraggly, chalky circles surround his eyes – but he is alive, he is breathing, even if there is a seraph blade pinned to his throat. But just as his heart jumps, it falls like a stone somewhere to the pit of his stomach. The other Circle member has Magnus in his clutches, blade to throat.

“Jace,” is the first thing that Alec can think to say, but Jace’s eyes are studiously averted. He does not so much as look at Alec. Then, stupidly, “Magnus?”

Magnus’s eyes are made of green-gold fire, his pupils vertical slits. He looks at Alec directly, but his expression is unfathomable, other than the rage that is simmering just below the surface. It doesn’t make sense for a moment why Magnus would be so easily held against his will, until Alec notices the chains that bind his hands, which have two metal spheres covering his hands like gloves so that they are completely unusable. So, too, must his magic be.

“Adamas chains,” Valentine explains, watching Alec’s line of sight. “Blocks the warlock’s demonic magic.”

Alec opens his mouth, but no words are coming. A thousand questions race through his mind – what does Valentine want with Magnus? If he wanted to kill him for being a warlock, why wasn’t he already dead? Why did he have a knife to his own son’s throat? He feels like his blood has congealed into lead, concrete poured into his brain. He cannot move, he cannot think, his mouth agape and eyes flicking from one blade to the next, his toxic mind skipping ahead a few moments, both of them lying in pools of their own blood, Alec powerless to stop it or save them.

“Although I guess I do owe you an explanation,” Valentine continues at Alec’s non-responsiveness, pacing casually around the room as if giving a lecture. “I meant to get you, of course, when I sent my demons. The _parabatai_. See how our Jonathan holds out when you’re being flayed in front of him. Of course, they’re not the brightest of creatures, demons. Picked up the _warlock_ instead.” Alec flinches at the vitriolic way Valentine spits the word ‘warlock’. Magnus’s face remains impassive, resigned. Not more in his life has Alec wanted to shoot Valentine in the throat. “If only I’d wiped their kind out the first time around. But no matter, no matter. This proposes an interesting dilemma for you, doesn’t it? Alexander?”

“What?” Alec croaks, but realization hits him like a ton of bricks to the gut. This is why Magnus and Jace are propped up like that, like pigs for slaughter. A sick game, a twisted little play that Valentine has set up here to punish him. “Why – why me?”

Valentine raises an eyebrow and shrugs noncommittally, as if Alec had asked him about the weather or something equally mundane. “Like I said, it wasn’t my original plan. But the cards have unfolded in an exciting way, haven’t they? Jace or the warlock…one lives, one dies. And it’s all on you. You’ve got your bow, you shoot one of my men and save one of yours. The other one’s throat will be cut open the moment your arrow lets loose.”

“He’s your son,” Alec says, mouth dry, not quite believing it, “you wouldn’t - ?”

Valentine rolls his eyes. “If you really believed that, you’d have acted already. Saved your Downworlder filth, left your parabatai my hands.” He pauses,  considering. “You know how much he’s been calling for you? You and Clary, Clary and you. Even after I sent my men in to torture him wearing your face. Still it’s _Alec_ this, _Alec_ that. It’s been getting old, if I’m honest. Now, Clary, misguided as she is, is my blood, Jace’s blood. I can respect their attachment, at least. But you, Alec? I knew your parents, liked them. When I found out Jace was bonded to their boy, I thought, how bad could it be? But now that I know what kind of man you are, what kind of _company_ you think it acceptable to keep, the very idea of it disgusts me, to be frank with you. If I could break it, believe me, I already would have. Jace should be ashamed. He isn’t, for whatever that’s worth to you, but I’m working on that.”

Alec feels himself going numb. With every word that Valentine says, he feels another weight being thrown onto him until it feels like his back has broken, every bone in his body turned to splinters. He doesn’t think he can move; he doesn’t think he knows how to move anymore, let alone speak, let alone understand.

“You’re a man of few words,” Valentine observes, tone dripping with mockery.

“No,” is the first word Alec can think to say, the word reverberating around his skull, throbbing inside his brain. “No, I’m not – I’m not – I’m not doing this.”

“Hmm,” Valentine says, as if he is considering this option. “Certainly, you can choose to do that. If you _nobly_ sacrifice yourself, of course, all three of you die. You do nothing, they both die. You shoot me, they both die. You call for your sister or my daughter, you all die. How’s that for a trick?”

“No,” Alec mumbles, shaking his head. His hands are trembling so much that his bow threatens to clatter to the floor. “No, I can’t…”

“Okay,” Valentine says, shrugging again, “if that’s what your call is – ”

“Wait,” Alec interrupts desperately, his voice cracking, “no – no…”

He can’t look at either of them, but when he closes his eyes, their faces are all he sees. Jace’s eyes, one blue and one brown, that used to leave scorch marks in his mind as if they were cigarettes pressed to his brain. Golden boy casts a long shadow, and for so long he had been lost in it. Then blue light, cat’s eyes, found him there and guided him into the sun for the first time in his life. Jace – clash of blades, easy smile, guarded hearts and matching runes, lost boy with eyes to get lost in, youth and laughter, adolescence and its unique agony, more part of Alec’s soul than he himself is. Every moment for the last ten years, where Jace has shaped him in every way, good and bad and irrevocable, flashes through his mind in a twisted montage of memories he’ll never get back. The last thought he is left with is _he was the only one who ever made me laugh_. Then, unexpectedly, two more words swim forward from the haze: _until Magnus._ Four more months concentrated into a moment’s memory, and he remembers how his heart felt like it was beating for the first time when Magnus came into his life with his glitter and his infinity and brought him back from the edge of the dark. How his lungs remembered how to breathe again. How he learned to smile again, and to speak and be heard, love and be loved back.

How can it end? Alec is numb, dumbfounded. The heart that he thought was healing feels like it has atrophied, withered and twisted into black wreckage. Nobody is looking at each other now. Alec feels the tears beginning to sting his eyes, choke his short breath into something that sounds like dry sobs. His brain is working, trying to find a way out of this, but it is as if someone has poured toxic sludge into his skull.

“Ten seconds, Alexander,” Valentine says. The blades press closer to their throats, a line of red appearing. “Or it’s over.”

Alec hears himself making a noise that doesn’t sound human, a wretched, agonized cry that emanates from somewhere deep in his lungs, so harsh that it chafes his throat as it comes out by force, sputtering into dry coughing, choked sobs. He nocks the arrow, aims, and fires.

There was never a  question. Both he and Valentine knew the endgame all along – the warlock dies, his son survives, he disappears, the Lightwood boy is damaged beyond repair. He cannot even make himself look up; he knows his aim is true. He points the arrow towards Jace’s captor and lets go, closing his eyes so the tears won’t fall. But they do anyway, squeezing out of the corner of his eyes, and with them so does he, collapsing to his knees as soon as the arrow lets loose. He wishes he said something, oh God, he should have said something, _Magnus I love you_ is what he wanted to say, but he said nothing and now he’ll never say anything again _–_ he can’t breathe – _what did I do what did I just do –_ every heartbeat is not a heartbeat but an accusatory chant of _Mag-nus, Mag-nus, Mag-nus_ , still somehow in perfect rhythm with him, as it always was with Magnus –

Then, the world suddenly becomes blue fire, rushing and scorching.

Then, ringing silence.

Then, nothing.

There is a stillness that seems like a harbinger of nothing but death. No voices. Alec is scared to open his eyes. Before he gets the chance to understand what happened, as the air around him smells like scorched earth and burnt flame, he hears the sounds of people rushing into the room, and then soon after hears the familiar tones of Izzy and Clary. _Jace_ , he hears them say.

Shaking violently, still on his knees, his eyes flutter open. Everything inside the room has been levelled into ash, and there is dark blue smoke making the ruins foggy and indistinct. The explosion, whatever it was, was so powerful it blew open the back wall of the room, exposing the bleak grey morning outside and subjecting the room to the biting late-autumn wind. As if a supernova or an atomic bomb had gone off, there is nothing left to salvage, with the exception of Alec, Jace, and –

 Catching sight of Magnus’s hazy, crumpled form, Alec wants to scream, but there is no air in his lungs. What little sound that emanates from his throats peters out in a choked wheeze. He never thought he could physically feel his heart fracture, like a stab to his chest. He had spent half his life trying to pretend there was nothing in his sternum but an empty corridor where no-one before had been welcome. In this bitter agony, he does not see that there is no blood surrounding Magnus, whose head is loose and bowed, but who is still – barely – on his knees. He does not notice how the chains of adamas are disintegrated.

Izzy and Clary, dishevelled and spattered with ichor, both rush past Alec and straight to Jace, neither sparing a glance at Magnus, nor at Alec. Alec cannot bring himself to look away from the floor. So long he had waited to find his parabatai, and now he can’t even look him in the eye. Dimly, he hears the girls asking Jace about what happened, where was Valentine, and Jace’s valiant attempts at speaking. He has never heard Jace’s voice so coarse before, as if someone had chafed his throat with sandpaper.

“Valentine was here.”

Alec’s head shoots up so fast he feels like he almost broke his neck – it was not Jace who spoke. Is it a figment of his imagination? That voice, rich, honey-smooth, musical. Now that the smoke of the explosion has cleared, Alec sees what he thought was the corpse of Magnus stand up on long, shaky legs. Dazed, he watches as Magnus looks around the room with a raised eyebrow, raising his hand to feel the air, as if it were silk between his fingers.

“What I thought,” Magnus says grimly. “Portal magic. Somehow he portalled out of here before I could incinerate him.”

Isabelle looks at him, and then glances uncertainly over at Alec, who is still on the ground, and still staring at Magnus in stupid disbelief. Alec can only imagine what she must be thinking.

“What happened?” Clary presses. She is kneeling by Jace, one arm around him in comfort. He leans, ever so slightly, into her touch.

“Valentine overpowered me and put me in adamas chains, thinking it could block my magic. Which it can, but only to an extent. And while he was monologuing like a stupid cartoon villain, I summoned the energy to, ah,” he gestures around the room with a touch of empty melodrama, “destroy everything. Except your brothers, Isabelle, of course, because I care for your happiness.”

Isabelle and Clary exchange a glance as they take in the destruction around them. Even the door is blown off of its hinges.

“Wow,” Isabelle says after a moment.

Magnus smiles, but it is hollow. “They don’t make you a High Warlock for nothing, my dear.”

“Clearly,” she says. “And Alec? Are you hurt? You’re kind of scaring me looking like that.”

Hearing the sound of his name breaks Alec from his stupor, and he stands up slowly, as the reality of what just happened settles like dust and rubble around them. He does not look at Magnus, even though there is nothing more he wants to do then drink him in, alive and healthy and still perfectly _Magnus_. “Nah,” he says, forcing hardness into his voice with practised ease. “Just the one on my shoulder. I’m…fine.”

Once again, the girls exchange glances. Both, he knows, are empathetic almost to a fault—and he knows for a fact that Izzy is shrewd as anything when it comes to deciphering Alec’s innermost feelings from three words and a moody expression. As she’s looking between him and Magnus, she opens her mouth to speak, but the sudden awkward silence that Alec’s words created is shattered by another voice.

“Alec?”

Jace’s voice is hoarse, but the name rings out clearly, like the peal of a church bell and just as haunting.

This isn’t how any of it was supposed to go. Finding Jace was supposed to be triumphant. Alec had imagined it a thousand times in his mind, reuniting with his _parabatai_ and remembering what it felt like to be whole, to not have an aching piece missing in your heart that hurts more and more with each passing moment. Now, he can barely make himself look at Jace without feeling nauseated at the events that just occurred.

Still, when he hears Jace say his name for the first time in too long, he can’t help the smile that forms partially on his face, a sun valiantly trying to push through miles of tangled cloud. “Hi,” he says, as gently as he knows how, walking over to him as he stands up with difficulty, supported by Clary.

When they face each other, there is a moment’s silence, as if the whole building, or the whole city and time herself, is waiting with bated breath. Alec can acutely feel Magnus’s eyes on him—they are not boring into him, but they are still watching, and Alec wishes almost that he would not. It doesn’t seem fair to Magnus, any of this.

Jace is looking at him in that way, that way that Alec has painstakingly memorized. A certain fondness, a certain exasperation, and something else that Alec has never been able to identify but knows exactly what it looks like on the planes of Jace’s face, in the depth of his blue-brown eyes. Normally they are sharp and keen, but right now they are glazed over and shuttered, just one of the ways in which he has been so broken over these months. None of this is fair. Somehow, Alec feels like he is to blame, and feels guilty for the twist in his stomach, absent of the elation he had expected.

Eventually, remarkably, Alec speaks first.

“Missed you,” he says, reflexively breaking eye contact.

Jace gazes at him for a moment, before dawn finally breaks over his darkened face, blossoming into a wide grin, so beautiful it is almost blinding to Alec at his proximity. “Yeah,” he says, and pulls Alec into a rough embrace. They do not let each other go for a while, and it eases the knot that has tangled up his insides by only a small fraction. But it is enough.

*

“We need to get out of here,” Clary says presently. “If Valentine’s really gone, there’s no point sticking around, is there?”

They are all gathered in the dirty concrete lot outside of the warehouse, surrounded by chain-link fences in disrepair. Nobody knows the extent of Jace’s injuries – I’m _fine_ , he keeps saying dismissively – but he at least is able to walk (albeit with Clary’s arm determinedly around him, despite being markedly shorter than he, although whether that is for comfort or support is unclear).

“Right,” Alec says. There is a beat of awkward silence. Without quite looking at him, Alec softens his authoritative tone slightly and says, “Magnus? Are you – is – can you make a portal?”

Magnus has been pale and drawn ever since his feat at the warehouse a few minutes ago, his posture less proud, his walk slightly unbalanced. (For what it’s worth, Alec notes with a sort of appreciation, his hair and makeup remain impeccable.) He shrugs, delicately examining his hands, adorned with several silver rings. “I did just level half a building, Alexander,” he says, his tone perfectly neutral.

Alec does not know how to respond to this.

“Great,” Jace says. “I guess we’re walking. Clary, you might have to carry me, I’m just forewarning you.”

Rolling his eyes, Magnus raises a hand to quiet him. “I was hoping captivity would iron out some of your glaring character flaws, but no such luck.” At Isabelle’s raised eyebrows and Clary’s half-hearted _Magnus_ , he corrects himself with a modicum of contrition. “I’m sorry, that was unwarranted. I do tend to get a little moody when I’ve used up my magic, and it’s been a stressful sort of day. You’re not the only one with glaring character flaws, little Shadowhunter.”

Alec notes with a heavy heart that this is the first time he has heard Magnus speak ill of himself. Many mistake it for arrogance, but there has always been something about self-confidence that has drawn Alec.

“Anyway,” Magnus continues, the word carried on a small, almost imperceptible sigh. “I can do my best, but I’ll need a little help.”

There are a few moments of silence, except for the cool wind’s low, drawling call as it blows around them in earnest, the fresh breath of almost-rain in the grey air. Clary, Jace, and Isabelle all glance at Alec expectantly. Alec catches Isabelle’s eye, and then quickly looks away as she gives him her patented, all-too-perceptive ‘what’s _wrong_ with you?’ look.

“Alexander?” Magnus prompts after another awkward few seconds of this, with the small hint of a smile around his eyes.

“Right.” Alec swallows, jolted out of his moment of frozen uncertainty. “Of course.”

He and Magnus walk several paces away from the others, just out of earshot. Alec can’t help but notice how they’re walking out of step again, like in the morning, but this time he doesn’t know who’s trying to stay away from whom, or if it’s just accidental—it’s been only a few hours since their kiss before the mission began, but it feels like it has been weeks since they last saw each other, and they haven’t figured out how to act around each other yet.

“Okay,” Magnus says. “You know, Alec, this isn’t going to work if you’re going to stand two feet away.”

“Sorry,” Alec says. He hadn’t been meaning to. “Um. Do I just – like last time? Is there any…standard… operating procedure with…”

For some reason, this makes Magnus laugh. Things Alec says in complete seriousness often do, and Alec likes it, seeing Magnus’s eyes crinkle and shine with amusement, even though he doesn’t quite know why. _You’re just endearing_ , Magnus had said once. This time, though, instead of fondness, when Magnus looks at him, his lips are still smiling but his face is written in an exhausted kind of sorrow that Alec has never seen before. It lasts only a moment, but it is enough to make Alec feel like someone stabbed him in the chest.

“Just take my hand,” Magnus says, as if the moment that just passed did not happen.

Alec does, wordlessly this time.

The feeling of sharing his strength with Magnus is a curious one. Contrary to what it sounds like, it doesn’t feel as though his energy is being sapped, his body growing weaker. Rather, he feels a closeness to Magnus radiating into every cell in his body, going even deeper than that, to some essence of himself that he barely recognizes and cannot see. It feels warm, but at the same time, there is something about it that makes him glad when it stops—something, like most things about Magnus, that feels just a little bit dangerous.

As their hands are clasped, Magnus waves his other one to create the portal back to the Institute. When it is done, Alec finds that they are not letting go, and he takes comfort in it, the most innocuous of physical affections.

Magnus turns to him. Still holding his hand, Alec feels as though he should say something. However, when he opens his mouth to speak—not certain yet of what is going to come out—Magnus raises a finger and places it just in front of his lips, just like he did on that first night, what feels like forever ago. It will stand out in his memory for a long time; it had been the first time Alec felt that something in his life was beautiful. And now he has ruined that, too, as is his nature.

“It’s okay,” Magnus says, expression unreadable. There is both a hint of a gentle smile somewhere near his eyes and the faint upturn of his mouth, but the sadness has not yet gone. His eyes themselves are guarded, and Alec knows he will not get anywhere near Magnus’s heart at this moment. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Alec swallows. “Okay.”

They usher the others over and prepare to return home. Magnus does not follow them to the Institute and instead creates another portal straight to his own apartment. Alec enters the Institute portal last, watching Magnus go with a heavy, sinking heart.

*

“Hey, Alec, can we talk for a sec?”

Alec, Jace and Clary had been sitting in silence in Jace’s room. Once they had taken him to the Institute, whatever injuries could be healed were healed, and the deeper ones were left helplessly where they were. Time might relieve their pain, but that will not be for a long time.

Clary had been doing most of the talking, with Jace replying to her every so often. It seems like he wants to talk to her but cannot find the words. She sits next to the bed where he lies restlessly, propped up by pillows into a sitting position; her hands move restlessly, as if she wanted to hold his hand, or touch him, but that she is making herself hold back. The past few hours have been exceedingly strange in terms of the Fairchild-Morgenstern-Wayland dilemma, what with the reunion of Jace and Jocelyn Fray presenting more questions than answers. While there is no name but “Morgenstern” for Jace to wear at the moment, from what Jocelyn has told them, it doesn’t seem that it is quite the whole truth. Alec would gladly offer his own to Jace, but he knows that Jace will not take the name of Lightwood—he never has, even though he deserves to, even though he has every right to it.

They are exhausted; by now, it is late at night, but none of them can sleep. Alec has been milling around the room uselessly, sometime sitting, sometimes pacing, wondering if he should leave Jace and Clary alone; but every time he tries to leave, Jace stops him.

“Me?” Alec says stupidly.

“No, I’m talking to the other person named Alec in this room,” Jace deadpans, giving him a tired smile.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Alec’s gaze flickers to Clary. “What about?”

Clary, taking the hint, jumps up abruptly. “I’m, ah, going to go check on Iz. She said she was warming up soup for you, but that was thirty-five minutes ago, and, frankly, I’m afraid.”

Jace grins. “Whatever you do, please don’t bring me that soup.”

Clary smiles back, her green eyes twinkling. “And break your poor sister’s heart? I don’t think so.”

Before Jace can respond, Clary has left, her fire-red ponytail bouncing with her gait as she closes the door tactfully behind her.

“Poor Izzy,” Alec says as he watches her leave. “I don’t think her cooking’s that bad.”

“That’s because you lack refined taste in anything,” Jace says teasingly. He pauses to consider, and then amends, “Except men, I guess. You’d think dating Magnus Bane would have given you an appreciation for the finer things in life.”

Alec stiffens at the mention of Magnus, but doesn’t say anything, determinedly avoiding Jace’s imploring gaze.

“Alec…” Jace says. “Hey, man. Look at me.”

At his request, Alec meets Jace’s eyes, but he trains his expression to be carefully blank. This is the only thing he is good at, emptying his countenance of anything that might resemble weakness. Pretending he is made of stone, so much that one day it might become true and he might be freed of all torment. Even though things are different now, ever since he came out, ever since he started being with Magnus, this still all comes to him with such practiced ease that he thinks it maybe never went away; that maybe it never will. He knows that Jace hates it when he does this, because Jace doesn’t like not being able to read him.

“What?” Alec says, almost roughly, as Jace just looks at him for a few long moments.

“Can we talk about what happened back at the warehouse? With – with me and Magnus?”

“What is there to talk about?” Alec says, trying to keep the melancholy from creeping into his voice. “I did what I had to do. He’ll probably never want anything to do with me again, but…”

“Thank you,” Jace interrupts as he trails off. This takes Alec off-guard, the sincerity in his blue-brown eyes. “I know it was the most messed-up situation, and I’m sorry that it had to happen the way it did, and I’m sorry about Magnus, but thank you for wanting to save me. Sometimes I take you for granted, Alec, and I forget that I have someone who’ll always, always do that for me. So sorry, and thanks.”

After a long moment of silence, Alec says finally, “Don’t worry about it. You’re my parabatai. It’s kind of the whole point.”

Jace looks down and grins. The brightness of his true smile, unfettered by cynicism or sarcasm, has always been blinding. “Yeah, I guess. I missed you.”

“Same,” Alec says, but then why has his heart felt heavy ever since Jace returned?

As Alec doesn’t continue, Jace is forced to continue to the conversation. Alec has never heard him hesitating or stammering quite as much as he is right now; he almost sounds like Alec on a good day. “So if – look, Alec, the thing with Magnus – okay, if you don’t want to talk about him, do you want to – I mean, it’s been an insane few months, but we never really talked about me. You and me, you know, your feel—”

Alec finds himself smiling, but he knows there is no mirth written in his expression. “No, Jace,” he says, and he can hear something awful in his own voice, something desperate and broken. He buries his face in his hands for a moment as if to erase it all. “No, I really, really, really don’t. Jace, I – Jace – ”

He does not want to talk about or even remember the torment of his infatuation for Jace over the last few years. The shame of it is caustic, burning his throat even when tries to open his mouth. The feelings themselves are mere echoes now, memories of that aching desire, but the shame still comes as strong as ever. He wishes he knew how to unlearn shame; but even the dead remnants of what he once felt for Jace have ruined him, it seems, for anybody else. He wants to blame Jace for everything, for every broken part of him, for every place inside him that now lies empty. He wants to hand Jace this mess that he’s made and absolve himself – _you made this, you ruined me, fix me, fill me back in, make me whole again, it’s on you._ But he knows in the end that Jace is not to blame. Jace only ever loved him, in all the ways he could.

After a long time, he forces himself to look back at Jace, who is looking at him with a perfect reflection of his own anguish. They are, after all, connected souls.

“Alec,” Jace says, his voice low and quiet, almost a whisper. “Alec, I’m so – I’m sorry.”

Alec doesn’t have it in him to tell Jace that it is not his fault, it never has been, he is not responsible for his broken-hearted brother.

After Alec says nothing, Jace continues in a stronger voice. “Go talk to Magnus, Alec. Please. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for my sake.”

Alec looks at the pleading eyes of this boy who, he understands now, has loved him more closely than he could ever imagine or deserve; who has shaped him, more than anyone else, for better and for worse.

“Okay,” he says, after a long time.

*

When Alec finally musters up the courage to ring the buzzer at Magnus’s apartment, he immediately regrets it the moment after he does it and almost runs back down the stairs.

He had spent the entire two-in-the-morning walk here painstakingly reliving that horrible moment from earlier in the day. He had tried to think of what to say, but every time it flashed in his mind’s eye, all the words he knows – poorly put together as they always are – leave his mind when confronted with the sheer enormity of what occurred. Everyone survived, in the end, but he wonders how much that counts for when the person who’s supposed to love you leaves you for dead in an instant. He can’t stop seeing Magnus’s eyes, the pain and the resignation.

There is no answer a few long, agonizing moments. Alec is contemplating booking it downstairs and out the door, and just starts to move towards the staircase when the door finally opens.

 “Hi – oh. It’s you.” Alec should be deflated at seeing Clary’s vampire friend instead of Magnus, but a large part of him is more relieved than anything.

“Yeah, sorry,” Simon says, flashing an apologetic grin. “Sorry. Um. Magnus is—well he was just here. I think he went to the bathroom? I’m not sure.”

“Okay,” Alec says, stepping past Simon into the apartment.

There’s a beat of silence. Alec isn’t sure what to say, and Simon’s hyperverbal-ness is absent, for the one time that it would not annoy Alec to death.

“I can go get him,” Simon offers eventually, as the silence stretches well into awkwardness. “I mean—you can too, I guess, but I was just saying—”

“Please don’t give yourself a stroke, Simon.” Magnus’s voice is as cool and as grand and as untouchable as it had been when they had first met him, with none of the softness that Alec has come to know. But there is a faint smile of fondness playing on his lips as he walks into the room with a cocktail glass already somehow in hand, his presence effortlessly commanding the attention of both the other people in the room.

“Sorry,” Simon says again, looking from Magnus to Alec like a deer caught between two cars hell-bent on colliding. “You know, I was just going to leave? Yes. That’s what I was going to do. I was going to check on Clary. And Jace, of course. Just gonna – go say hi.”

“Have fun,” Alec says flatly, but despite his indifferent tone, he deftly throws Simon his key to the Institute. “Just so no one gives you trouble.”

Simon gives him a grateful grin. The relief that sags his shoulders as he leaves the two of them alone is clearly visible as he closes the door behind him.

He forces himself to look at Magnus instead of avoiding his gaze, and immediately regrets that decision. He looks breathtakingly beautiful, as he always does. His brown eyes are made even warmer by the silky black liner that outlines them, his hair not as spiky as normal and looking invitingly soft. The deep violet silk shirt he’s wearing sports a sinfully plunging neckline, partially covered by a couple of silver necklaces.

“Hi,” Alec says after a discomfited silence. “I came to talk.”

Magnus inclines his head slightly. There is something just slightly off about the way Magnus is acting, as though Alec were somebody like Isabelle—a friend, certainly, but nothing more. It’s as if there is an icy veil between him and Alec, that guardedness that Alec had thought he had been privileged enough to transcend.

Before Alec can say anything else, Magnus sits down on the couch with unerring grace and sips his drink casually. Alec notes with some discomfort how he does not offer Alec either a drink or a seat, something extremely out of character for the usually exceedingly magnanimous warlock.

“Okay,” Magnus says, waving an arm. “So talk.”

But the words don’t come. He doesn’t know what to say.

“You can come and sit, you know,” Magnus adds in softer tones after a few moments of Alec just looking at him uncertainly, sounding a little sad, perhaps at these strange formalities that they have somehow caught themselves in.

Alec remains standing, several feet away from him. “Look,” he blurts, “Magnus, what happened back at the warehouse – I’m not good at this, at any of this. I need you – I need you to talk to me, I need to – I need to fix this. Please, Magnus. Talk to me.”

“Sometimes,” Magnus says quietly, “it’s not about what _you_ need.”

Alec balls his hands into fists and shoves them into his pockets, averting his gaze to the floor. “Sorry,” he says. He doesn’t know what else to say, so he says it again and again. “Sorry – I’m so sorry about what happened back there, Magnus, I’m so sorry I literally don’t know how to tell you in words how sorry I am. I’m sorry I _don’t_ have the words. I’m sorry I’m such a fuck-up, I’m sorry that I don’t even know the first thing to say to make this any better, I – I – Magnus, I’m sorry.”

Magnus isn’t looking at him, focusing his eyes on the cocktail glass in his hand; but by the slight furrow in his brow, Alec can tell that his mind is elsewhere. When he looks up, for a brief moment, his face is brimming with compassion, until it abruptly clears into being impenetrable once more.

“He’s your parabatai, Alec, I understand,” Magnus says after a long time, his voice empty of bitterness, perfectly neutral. “Half of your soul, no human bond compares, et cetera, et cetera. I wasn’t born yesterday, after all. There’s nothing to get so worked up about.”

Somehow his casualness incenses Alec to the point of further incoherence. “ _Yes!_ Magnus, _yes there is_. You – I – you – you – ”

Magnus raises a quizzical eyebrow at his sputtering and his gesticulating in a way that is almost mocking. It hurts Alec more than he would have expected: Magnus, who is always gentle when he stammers, who always seemingly knows what he’s going to say even if he cannot get the words out. But all the same, he knows that not all of Magnus’s cool exterior is always true. Over the years, Magnus has learned the art of the façade better than anybody, and Alec can now understand why. If everyone who has loved Magnus has hurt him even a fraction as much as Alec has, Alec does not know how anyone could bear it without turning hard, without retreating into the idea of themselves alone for protection. And, after that, all the loss – it does not bear thinking about.

Abruptly, Magnus stands up, putting his drink down, and walks over to Alec. There is a catlike grace in every movement, and, like a panther, there is a hint of threat in each step. He doesn’t make it all the way, stopping a few paces short of Alec, something for which Alec is grateful – he doesn’t want to have to look into those eyes, that hold the sadness of too many centuries.

“Why?” Magnus’s voice is steely and guarded, but it laced with something else, a quiet poison, a deliberate provocation. “Why do you care so much, Alec?”

The way he emphasizes the hard end of the nickname – which Alec has become accustomed to flowing into the softer sounds of his full first name – is the only indication of Magnus’s hurt lashing out, in the most minute of ways. For some reason, it and the question that Magnus had asked so flippantly – _why do you care –_ makes him angry beyond belief.

His mind churning with this strange rage, he yells the first thing that comes into his mouth, the highest truth of his heart.

“Because I _love_ you, you – ”

There are some times when Alec blurts things out like this that Magnus’s expression is so kind, so open and compassionate that it hurts Alec’s heart to know that someone who has seen so many centuries could still have some part inside him that is pure and unravaged by time. This is not one of those times; right now, he is a storm, and in these moments he looks every part of himself – every century weathers itself on his face, and the darkness and ancientness of his blood and being become somehow more pronounced, in the penetration of his amber eyes or the shape of his high, golden cheekbones. Dark kohl lines his eyes thickly with a touch of glitter, and in this moment Alec finds his depths and paradoxes unfathomable.

“I love you,” Alec says again, quieter, more uncertain. This is the first time he has said it to Magnus.

Magnus says nothing for a long, long moment. There is nothing Alec wants more than to hear it said back, even though he knows bitterly that he does not deserve it, could never deserve it. _I love you, too_ , he keeps hearing in his mind, in Magnus’s voice, but it doesn’t come.

The seconds pass in agonizing silence – the whole world seeming to have come to a standstill, no sound, no light, no movement – until Magnus walks up to Alec abruptly. Alec braces himself for anger or rejection, and is thoroughly, completely staggered when Magnus grabs him by the collar, shoves him against the wall behind them, and kisses him deeply.

It’s a strange sort of kiss, a kind that they have not had before. There is desperation, and there is hunger, and the anger is still not gone; in fact, it is more apparent than ever. After getting over his surprise, his hands find Magnus’s waist, but once it becomes clear that he is not the one in control, he is more than content to relinquish it, leaning back against the wall that Magnus has pushed him up against, kissing him back just as deeply, just as desperately—if he will not take the apology from his words, Alec is hoping he will take it from his lips.

Magnus’s hands grasp Alec’s face, pulling him closer, trying to close a gap that isn’t there, trying to make them physically closer than is possible. Alec deepens the kiss, now a fervent clash of lips and tongue and teeth, trying to bridge whatever space is left between them. Suddenly, though, he feels that Magnus hands are trembling against his skin, shaking with a violence that he has never seen from the warlock before. Abruptly, Magnus lets him go and they break apart, still millimetres from each other, separated by a mere breath or less.

“You love me?” Magnus says, looking Alec in the eyes. He wants to make it sound like a test, like a challenge, but something in his face betrays the disbelief, the broken-heartedness that is poorly disguised within his words. His eyes speak all the volumes and tomes of tragedy that his lips will not.

Alec swallows. This isn’t how he imagined it happening. “I do. I – yes. I love you. Since the second I first looked at you, even though I maybe didn’t know it then.”

Magnus closes his eyes, his breath catching in his throat. “I love you, too,” he says finally. “Alexander, I love you.”

Now it’s Alec’s turn to kiss him, and he does with the same fervour, the same hunger, but with less uncertainty. Magnus’s hair is as soft and beautiful to the touch as it looks, and he fastens his hands there as he pulls Magnus closer. He wants to say something – he came here to talk after all, but the breaths between kisses are too short, gasps of hunger before their lips find each other again.  He is dimly aware of his hands trying to pull off Magnus’s silk tunic from his body, a bejewelled, pretty sort of garment that he remembers appreciating the colour of, the way the deep violet complemented Magnus’s complexion. At the moment, he could care less and just wants Magnus out of it. After having come so close to losing Magnus for good, there is nothing he wants more than to be as close as possible to him, to feel every inch of his bare skin on Alec's own.

Alec is so focused on this fixation that he doesn’t realize his own strength. The shirt tears, almost clean in half. Alec pauses and draws back in small trepidation, expecting Magnus to be at least a little upset. Magnus looks down in some surprise and quickly mends it with magic, but when he meets Alec’s gaze again, his eyes are brimming with something quite, quite different from anger, and the small distance between them closes again. Alec can’t help but smile slightly as he tugs lightly at Magnus’s lower lip with his teeth.

Eventually, painstakingly – as neither particularly wants to take their hands or lips off of the other – they make it to the sofa, where Magnus gently pushes Alec down and moves his focus away from Alec’s mouth, kissing down along his jaw, then down the line of his throat, Alec unable to contain a soft gasp as he leans back his head to expose his neck for Magnus. Magnus reaches the hollow of Alec’s throat and the soft kisses against his skin become deeper and more intense, teeth scraping skin in a way that does not hurt, does the opposite of hurt – Magnus starts tracing the line of the rune on his neck with his teeth and lips and tongue. Alec’s gasps become shorter and sharper as Magnus’s attentions intensify, tilting his head further back and grasping the back of Magnus’s head, trying to guide him back to Alec’s lips, but Alec’s hands are trembling and have been made weak; he can feel the bruises forming where the bite marks are and it makes his skin tingle; it makes him feel a way that he does not remember feeling before. The only word on his lips is Magnus’s name.

Magnus’s mouth traces back up the line of his rune, the kisses getting softer and more chaste until they reach Alec’s lips again, and Magnus gives him a kiss that is slow and deep and gentle as the night. They had started this in some kind of argument, needing to have something burned out of both of them; but the fire is extinguished in Magnus, and there is little of anything left but a broken sort of tenderness now.

Pulling away from Alec’s lips, Magnus leans up slowly to kiss him on the forehead tenderly, smoothing away his fringe. The tenderness and near protectiveness of it breaks something inside Alec. He pulls Magnus closer, about to press his lips to the expanse of skin of Magnus’s neck that is now before him – he wants to kiss any inch of Magnus he can get close enough to. Just before he does, he catches sight of something that turns his heart to lead, dropping into his stomach and making him want to vomit. A scar, paper-thin, from a seraph blade running horizontal across Magnus’s throat. Alec begins to tremble, his voice catching in his throat as he tries to speak but cannot form the words, instead making pathetic half-sobs. He buries his face into the crook between Magnus’s neck and shoulder, barely comforted by the caress of Magnus’s long fingers at the back of his neck. “Magnus, I’m – so, so sorry.”

“What? Alec, what is it?”

“You shouldn’t even have been there. You were there only for me. And the way he talked about you, like you weren’t even a _person –_ like they all do, like _we_ all do – what he could have done to you, what he would have – and I just left you for – for –  Magnus – ” his voice breaks and they lapse into a fractured silence.

Magnus is quiet for a long time, stroking Alec’s hair gently. Finally, he says softly, “forgive me, Alexander.”

“What?” Alec mumbles, disoriented, muffled against Magnus’s skin. “For – for what?”

He sighs. “I could have—when I destroyed the warehouse, I could have done it a few moments earlier than I did. To be perfectly honest with you, I wanted to see what you would do. It was selfish of me. I didn’t – I didn’t think, Alec, I didn’t think how much it would hurt you to choose him. I didn’t think it _would_. And for that I hope you can forgive me.”

“Forgive you? I’m the one who—” Alec’s words are coming in fits and starts, as are his confused thoughts and the flood of feelings he has barely yet learned how to feel, a torrential surge that overwhelms him. Rather than stone like they all believe, his heart feels like it’s made of wood, harder than most but dampening, rotting and aching in the wake of this deluge. “Forgive—I’m the one—wait, you didn’t think—you didn’t think it would hurt me? Magnus…Magnus, it killed me for a minute until I heard your voice. And part of me wants to hate you for making me go through it when you could have stopped it, but I can’t. No part of me can. But I— it wasn’t—in the end, I chose him. I would – I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

“You love me, Alexander,” he says, his smile as sad as his eyes. Alec did not miss the way he winced almost imperceptibly at hearing the words _I chose him_. “I can’t really ask for any more than that.”

That doesn’t seem fair to Alec. He tries to explain.  “He’s a part of me, Magnus, he’s half my soul, he’s my brother, if it were anybody else – if it were _me…_ I can’t – I couldn’t – I would – ”

“I know. Parabatai.” He sighs. “The one of your traditions that has always broken my heart. I understand, Alexander, I do. I know I’ve been unfair about it. And I want you to know that I understand, and that it isn’t your fault.”

 _You don’t deserve this_ , is what Alec is going to say, _you deserve better than me, you deserve the world and a love less broken._ But he can’t find the right words. He just swallows and nods.

There is a strain of vulnerability in Magnus’s voice when he speaks next, his words almost a whisper. Alec has never heard Magnus talk like this. “I really hate to ask you, but I just – Alec, one day, maybe years and years from now, if we have that much time…could it – would it ever be me? One day?”

Alec looks at Magnus, stricken. He was not expecting the question, and he finds that he does not know the answer. The sweetest thing about Magnus is that Alec never thought he could have any happiness this artless and this pure in his future – he never thought he could have this kind of love in his life. He never had the chance, like so many other children do, to stop and fantasize about the idea of a soulmate, of someone to spend your whole life in love with. Now, faced with the hypothetical prospect for the first time, he does not know how to make sense of it in his mind.

He still cannot think of an answer. He thinks of Jace lying in a pool of blood and he knows it would destroy him—he had heard the stories, had read about them before the parabatai ceremony all those years ago. Of Nephilim who died themselves when their parabatai were killed in battle, or if they did not die, they were never the same again; of soldiers who could not save their brothers on the battlefield and slit their own throats to stagger to their knees and die next to their parabatai. He was seventeen, but it did not scare him, because then he did not think he would ever care to live a life without Jace. He did not think that his life might be worth something without Jace. He did not think he would ever find anything else worth being alive for. And now that he has, the thought of losing it is as unbearable as losing this part of his own soul.

As he tries to gather his thoughts, he is acutely aware of how the whole apartment is filled with dead quiet, the tension thick and palpable in the air. His silence speaks volumes. As the next few seconds pass with no words spoken, it’s as if shutters close over Magnus’s face, a shadow passing over it even though it is bathed in warm light. That rare look, when his eyes are wide, his lips parted, his brow raised slightly, that look of lovesickness and vulnerability that Alec lives for, disappears within an instant.

Alec had thought that he had mastered the art of self-loathing long ago, but he realizes he never knew how much he could hate himself until this moment.

He opens his mouth to say something, an apology, an answer, something – but nothing comes out. The look on Magnus’s face is twisting something inside of him, creating a physical ache deep in his chest. For Alec, love has always been agony, but for some reason he can never get used to it, and his heart keeps breaking and breaking. He thought it could have been different with Magnus.

“Magnus,” is the only word that he can manage, his voice a broken whisper. The sharp sting of tears threatens Alec’s eyes. He leans in and kisses Magnus, if only to get the chance to close his eyes and not have to look at the way Magnus’s broken heart is written on his face, trying to say what words won’t.

It doesn’t feel like it should. Magnus’s lips are as soft as ever when he kisses back, but it doesn’t make that hollow feeling at the pit of his stomach go away. It makes it worse; somehow, even though he can feel love bursting the seams of his being, he still feels empty. That’s not fair—none of this is fair. Unbidden, the tears in his eyes start to fall, slowly, one by one. When their lips separate for breath, Alec whispers, “I love you,” as if that is the answer to Magnus’s question, as if that is an antidote to all of this. _I love you, and not him, and not anybody else. Not like this._ He thought when he could finally say it, it would make him feel free. He didn’t think it would be like this, through halted breaths and choked-down sobs. “I love you, I love—I—”

“Oh – Alec, no…” Magnus murmurs, his brow furrowing in sympathy or in sorrow. He pulls back a little more, just enough to wipe the tears from Alec’s face with his thumb. “Alec, darling, don’t…”

This only makes it worse. Alec can’t remember the last time this happened in front of somebody else. He thought he could keep it inside himself, but today, everything is unravelling. He bites his lip and tries to steady his breathing.

“Alec, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have – ”

“You’re perfect,” Alec blurts, and Magnus raises his eyebrows slightly at the interruption. Alec looks down when he speaks. “I mean, it’s not on you. You’re fine, you’re not being irrational or unfair, you’re good, you’re too good. It’s me, I – I – I’m not good at this. I don’t know how I got so… _fucking_ screwed up that I can’t get any of this right. Remember this morning, I couldn’t even walk next to you, I couldn’t even _look_ at you when that stupid guy called me a f—when he said what he said about me. That’s bad enough, but then – everything happened and – I’m sorry, _look_ at me. I – Magnus, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I – why am I – ? I’m supposed to love you, and look at the mess I made instead. I’m so sorry, I – I don’t want to make you feel like this, but I don’t know how to make it right.”

Only after he has said everything does he find the courage to look Magnus in the eyes. He is startled to see them shining with unshed tears, as if mirroring Alec. Magnus wraps his arms around Alec, allowing Alec to rest his head on Magnus’s chest, rocking back and forth gently as if to comfort him. When he speaks, his voice is soft.

“You’re not incapable of love, Alexander. Far, far from it. I’m sorry that I made you think so. Nobody is that broken, least of all you. Maybe we – maybe we both can learn.” Magnus sighs. “Alec, I – I want to get it right too. I never have, not – not in the ways that count. We can learn, right? You and me, together.”

Looking up at him, Alec is struck suddenly by how young he looks, and by everything that he is, this man that he loves despite not knowing how. This man who thinks that nobody could love him, or maybe that nobody should, despite all the beautiful things that he is. This man who is so much more than a man, and yet in some ways still a boy, vulnerable and soft-hearted. There is something visceral inside Alec, ever the big brother, that wants fiercely to protect him from pain that he doesn’t even quite understand, aches that he, frustratingly mortal as he is, could never experience.

“Yeah,” Alec says. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do that.”

“Okay.” Magnus smiles at him, his eyes still a little wet. He leans down and kisses Alec gently, a soft brush of lips. “Let me start: I love you, Alexander. Just as you are.”

“I love you too. Only you, all of you,” Alec says honestly. These are the words he knows for now, and hopefully one day soon he will be able to say everything that is in his heart in this moment. He is holding Magnus’s hand in his own, and presses it to his lips as if to seal his words like a promise.

The way that Magnus looks at him, the words tugging from him a small smile, fills Alec with a warmth that he cannot describe or explain. It feels like he is safe from the cold, and the chill wind blowing outside these four walls cannot hurt him or either of them anymore.

*

Magnus is stymied, it seems, by breakfast. He and Alec have been together for going on four months now, but he still isn’t quite sure of Alec’s breakfast preferences. Whenever they have had breakfast together, Alec just seems to go for whatever’s in front of him, and when they go out, Alec orders what Magnus orders. So that’s the first problem. The second one is, being a warlock, he could easily just magic a whole bunch of food here, but that doesn’t seem to suit his mood at the moment. But, at the same time, cooking it himself – much as he likes to cook – would appear far too domestic, on the whole.

He tries to keep his thoughts focused on the matter of breakfast, as if trying to plug up a burst dam with pancake mix.  But he has never been good at hiding, least of all from himself: the other thoughts keep seeping through into his consciousness. But he doesn’t want to deal with yesterday morning and then last night, the tears and the promises and all the pain laid bare. There’s a strange sort of embarrassment that chokes him when he thinks about it; he doesn’t remember ever talking to another person like that, revealing the farthest corners of his hidden, hidden heart. It scares him, to think what Alexander Lightwood has made of him, how the Shadowhunter has unravelled him, in so short a time. And how his heart aches for the boy, a man but still in so many ways a child. Magnus had let Alec sleep with him—in the most innocuous sense—on his bed, holding him gently until he fell asleep with his head resting on Magnus’s chest. And Magnus had not slept all night, watching him for a few hours into the early hours of the dawn. Forehead smooth of lines and sorrow, long eyelashes fluttering softly. He feels briefly guilty for the blue-purple bruises that stain his neck like blots of ink, stark against his porcelain-white skin, but he doesn’t know why. Magnus’s heart is a hard burden, and he feels guilty for giving it to someone who is so willing to take it, who is so willing to break under its weight and apologize for it. Soon after the sun’s first rays broke, he had quietly extricated himself from Alec to come to the kitchen and stare at flour and eggs. Which brings him back to breakfast and all the problems that it poses.

Magnus is so absorbed in his mind that he barely registers the fact that he has just buzzed somebody up into his apartment while assuming that it was Alec, since it’s always Alec, except for the fact that Alec is currently asleep in the other room. He only breaks out of his reverie when he hears footsteps entering into his foyer.

“Who’s there?” he says, feeling pretty stupid. Since it’s obviously not Alec, he quickly and surreptitiously magics his hair and makeup into its usual style—although he’s only dressed in a deep violet dressing gown, that’s the least he can do.

“It’s…Jace?” The blond Shadowhunter walks in with as much uncertainty as Magnus has ever seen in him, his arms raised slightly in a sardonic surrender. “You just buzzed me in.”

“Right.” Magnus clears his throat. Of all the people he wants to see right now, Jace Wayland is not really high on the list. Just yesterday, he would have been elated at a glimpse of that golden hair, for all that it would mean to this little family that he finds himself strangely a part of. But today, after last night, it just gives him a dull ache. “You. To what do I owe the pleasure, little Shadowhunter?”

Jace rolls his eyes. Magnus can’t help but feel sorry for him and the way that he seems to wince with every movement, no matter how minor. Four months in the captivity of Valentine is a horrific prospect for anybody. “Stop calling me that.”

“Why? You’re a Shadowhunter, and you’re quite small. It’s only the truth.”

“We’re the same height, Magnus.” Jace shakes his head and continues. “ _Anyway_ , I just – came to…is Alec here?”

Magnus nods. “He is, he’s sleeping in the other room, and I’m…figuring out…breakfast, I guess.”

Jace raises his eyebrows. Magnus wishes he could magic away the heavy awkwardness undercutting their exchange. “Okay. Um, you do that, and meanwhile, can I go see Alec?”

“Be my guest,” Magnus says. “He’s in my room, down that hallway, first door on the left. Don’t touch anything, though. Other than Alec, if you must, I suppose.”

Magnus is relieved when Jace disappears behind the door, if only because it dispels the weird tension between them; but the relief is short-lived. After only a few moments, Jace reappears and closes the door carefully behind him. Magnus resists the urge to sigh.

 “No, I couldn’t wake him.” Jace shrugs, walking back over to the kitchen area of the loft. “Usually he’s up before everyone, so I never usually have to. I forget how calm he looks.”

Magnus shrugs in acknowledgement, because, fair enough. There’s nothing more precious in the world than a sleeping Alec Lightwood.

“Also,” Jace adds with raised eyebrows, “those are some _spectacular_ hickeys. I’m impressed, if a little grossed out.”

“Thank you,” Magnus says, inclining his head slightly, unable to stop a faint smirk from forming around his lips.

“So I took it you guys, uh, made up?”

Magnus looks at him with a raised eyebrow as he pretends to busy himself with making breakfast, although his mind is so full of other things that he barely registers what his hands are doing. “Who says we were fighting?”

Jace doesn’t seem to know what to say, and looks around, wrong-footed. “Just, after yesterday…Alec seemed pretty messed up when he left, and with what happened yesterday, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling—”

“Listen,” Magnus says abruptly, slamming the carton of eggs that he’d been holding onto the counter and facing Jace again. “Forget about it, okay? Yes, it happened. No, It didn’t feel very good, if I’m honest, but, no, it’s not your problem. Look, I’m not like the rest of you, Wayland – ”

“Wayland? Not anymore, haven’t you heard?” Jace says, but under the sarcasm is a genuine bitterness that is painful to hear.

It’s hard to have no name. Magnus can attest to that.

“Sorry,” is all Magnus can think to say to that. “ _Anyway_ , like I said, I’m not like you, like any of you.”

“What do you mean?”

Magnus makes an impatient noise. “I _mean_ , I don’t sign up for rainbows and sunshine. I don’t entertain the notion that I’m going to have a happy ending with anybody. I can’t. It doesn’t work that way when you’re immortal.” He hesitates, a rare phenomenon. “When you’re me. Jace, from the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew your parabatai was going to break my heart. Maybe once, maybe a thousand times, but it was the only sure thing. It always is.”

Jace swallows, then nods, as if he understands. Magnus sometimes forgets that he is even younger than Alec. “Then…why? Why bother?”

“The same reason that he longed for you for all these years while knowing he could never have you,” Magnus says bluntly. “Because when we love, we accept every torment, every sacrifice, as if it were gold offered from the hands of angels. Because we think it must be worth it. Or perhaps we convince ourselves we deserve it.”

Jace is quiet for a few long moments. Then: “You love him?”

Magnus smiles, mostly to himself. “Sounds like I do, doesn’t it? Bad habit of mine.”

“What?”

“Nothing, don’t worry your pretty head about it. Yes, I love him.” Magnus knows it’s uncalled for, but he can’t resist adding something else. “And, surprisingly enough, he loves me too. Reciprocity, I’m sure, is a welcome change for him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jace says, stepping forward towards Magnus, his voice suddenly low, all hints of friendliness drained from his face.

“Nothing,” Magnus says, raising an eyebrow. “Just that I hope Alec can finally heal now. Now that he’s moved on from, well, you know.”

There is silence. Magnus half-wishes he could take the words back, because he doesn’t mean them, not in that way. He has no fight with Jace.

 “What?” Jace says, his voice trying to be threatening, but Magnus can hear clear as day the places where he is fighting to keep it from breaking. “Do you think I _liked_ any of it? That I somehow relished in the idea that he loved me but I couldn’t ever love him back, not in the way he wanted? Do you think I enjoyed seeing him suffer like that because of me? Do you think it doesn’t haunt me sometimes, the ways that I’ve hurt him, how _much_ I’ve hurt him, without being able to do anything about it? I’m not just his parabatai, it goes both ways – he’s a part of me, and – Look, the way he looked at me last night—I did that, Magnus, I’ve broken something in him, and I hate myself sometimes for it—”

“Don’t hate yourself,” Magnus says wearily. All these broken birds around him—maybe it’s his own fault for surrounding himself with people who need saving. Maybe it’s a distraction from himself. “Forget what I said, I’m sorry. None of it is your fault. You’re not the villain in his story, or my story, or anybody’s story. Some things are just tragic with no rhyme or reason.”

Jace doesn’t smile at this. Magnus is used to Alec, who is so used to berating himself that to hear it rebuked always takes him a little aback, and he always gives this little unconscious smile. Jace just nods slowly, still looking like he’s on the verge of a fight. Alec is less hardened and easier to convince of his own virtues. “So then what?” is all he says, stepping back.

“So nothing.” Magnus shrugs. “You’re the one in my house. Why’d you come?”

“To make sure everything was okay with Alec.”

“Alright then,” Magnus says, waving a couple of fingers lazily to conjure up a cup of tea for himself. It’s been a stressful sort of morning. “Feel free to leave whenever you like. Can I get you anything?” he adds reluctantly as he sips his tea. 

“No,” Jace says, with the barest hint of an exasperated smile, “I’m – I’m good. Just – can I say something?”

“If I say no, will you stop?”

“No,” Jace says again, firmly. “The reason I told Alec to come here last night was because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I knew that I ruined what he has with you. Stupid and cliché as it’s going to sound, you’re the best thing that’s probably ever happened to him. And—what you said, that you knew Alec was going to break your heart? That’s not—look, I don’t know your life or your story, or whatever, but that’s not Alec. When Alec loves you, he gives everything that he has. He’ll empty himself for you, and he still won’t think it’s enough and he’ll say sorry for not being good enough. So if there’s anyone in the world who isn’t going to hurt you, it’s him.”

 _If there’s anyone in the world who isn’t going to hurt you_. Jace might have seen too much and suffered more than most people his age—but when Magnus looks at him, the bright eyes of ephemeral youth shine back at him, full of hope and the kind of promise and obliviousness that only comes when you have not lived long, but have not long to live, the feeling that Magnus has never known. Magnus smiles at him, as he tries to imagine it, and tries to have hope, and tries to believe that what Jace is saying is true. Hope, after all, has always been his fatal flaw.

“Thank you, Jace,” he says. “I’m sure Alec won’t mind if you wake him, if you want to talk to him.”

“No, I’m good,” Jace repeats, giving Magnus a faint half-smile. “Ask him how he’s doing for me, will you?”

“Certainly.”

“See you around, Magnus.”

Magnus tries, and fails, to quell his natural instincts towards sarcasm. “I should hope to be so lucky.”

“You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

Magnus winks, his eyes suddenly gold-green with pupils like slits. “Of course I do.”

*

“Magnus?”

Hearing Alec’s sleepy mumble, Magnus looks up from where he was curled up on the sofa with his tea, reading through some of his spells he’s trying to compile into a book. The early afternoon sun streams in from the wide window  overlooking the bridge, making it difficult to concentrate anyway.

“Morning, dear. You’re finally awake?”

“Yeah,” Alec says. His hair is rumpled, sticking up at the back, and he’s rubbing at his slightly bloodshot eyes. “Sorry. I hadn’t been sleeping well the past few nights, I guess.”

“Not at all. Those _are_ twelve-hundred thread count Egyptian linens, I can hardly blame you.”

Alec smiles at this, absently running a hand through his hair. “What _time –_ I should probably get back to…”

“It’s just after twelve,” Magnus says. He hesitates. “Jace came by a couple of hours ago. He wanted to check on you, or talk to you, or something, but you were asleep. He said he was going to wait for you back at the Institute.”

“Oh, he came here?” Alec turns to the door automatically, as if he might still be on his way out, his lips unconsciously form into a small half-smile, the kind of smile that he probably doesn’t even know that he’s wearing right now, the kind of smile that betrays a love so strong the body recognizes it before the mind can even register it. Something in Magnus’s heart tightens just a little.

 “Yes,” Magnus says. He doesn’t know why, but he’s almost nervous when he continues. “But before you go – I was hoping you would have breakfast with me?”

Alec turns back to face Magnus, looking uncertain for half a moment until he catches sight of the table laden with every kind of breakfast food imaginable. (Magnus had not been able to decide on one, and kept cooking as Alec kept sleeping, and then eventually exhausted all the possibilities and sat down to read.) Then, Alec’s smile widens into a grin, bright and brilliant and just as rare and as beautiful as any precious gem that Magnus can think to name. He’s not smiling at the food, though; his eyes are trained squarely on Magnus.

“Of course, Magnus,” he says, and then shakes his head. “You’re too much.”

Magnus shrugs, but he can’t help but smile back.

“You could have woken me up,” Alec continues as he takes a seat on the sofa next to Magnus, putting an arm around him. “I’m pretty good in the kitchen. I cook for Jace and Iz a lot. Anyway, it’d be – maybe it’d be fun to do it, you know, together.”

Magnus looks up at Alec, imagines him in an apron and dusted lightly with flour, smiling this same absentminded smile as he whisks some eggs. As bland and mundane as the fantasy is, it makes Magnus’s heart hurt a little, in a good way, in the best way possible. “Yeah, it would,” he says honestly. “Next time?”

“Okay.” Alec smiles. “Next time together. And then the time after, it’s my treat.”

If Magnus is to be honest, a part of him still aches at Alec’s silence last night, after he had stupidly asked _could it ever be me_? He knows it’s not Alec’s fault, he knows it was too heavy a question for such a new and fragile thing in Alec’s life – but heartache does not know neither reason nor rhyme, something Magnus learned early on in his long life. Alec could not make a promise that big, but he has strung two together right now without even thinking about it. _This time, next time, the time after that_. All of these small promises, oaths that will come together one day into the next, will soon begin piece together a life lived in the light of one another. Every small vow kept is a whisper of some bigger truth, a truth that both of them don’t quite know yet, but a truth that beats through their bodies like blood. Every day together, every promise spoken, is one step toward recognizing that truth, then understanding it, then living it. And they will have time for that, days and months and maybe years, and they will have time for each _next time_ promised with a small smile and sweet-hearted intent.  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I think I just really like hurting Alec Lightwood, and I apologize for that, but also not. Also for some reason my Malec fics all end up being about Jace. I have a problem. For those interested, I am still trying to work on a sequel for "Home," but the inspiration is not striking. Feel free to hit me up on tumblr at [daddarios](http://daddarios.tumblr.com).


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